After yesterday, XSET guaranteed themselves a top three finish in the NA VALORANT Champions Tour second stage, taking just one step closer to buying their ticket to the next Masters event in Copenhagen, all of this thanks to a commanding 2-0 win against 100 Thieves on Saturday.
With the victory secured against 100 Thieves, XSET managed to remain in the upper bracket of the VCT Challengers 2 playoffs stage, and is just one more series victory away from qualifying for the second international LAN of the year Masters Copenhagen. Currently XSET is waiting on the winner of the match between OpTic Gaming and Evil Geniuses to see if their upper bracket run will continue with not much competition, or if they will fall to the lower bracket thanks to a strong opponent.
Popular map choice Icebox was the opener game in the best-of-three series, which was actually picked by XSET, meaning 100 Thieves as usual would start on defense. Despite a fairly aggressive setup in the early game from 100 Thieves managing to take a 6-1 lead, they were not able to keep XSET sitting on the chair as they were able to crawl their way back by the end of the half. With the game state as a tie 6-6, XSET once again started a little bit slower however gaining momentum to a strong finish with consecutive round wins, and showcased why they had selected Icebox. They took the map 13-10 after winning six of the final seven rounds in a row. Cryocells performance on Chamber was absolutely magnificent , as his net 1.67 K/D with 25 kills was the main reason XSET was able to close the game.
100 Thieves decided to select Ascent as the second map of the series, a map neither team had seen much playing time on during the group stage, as the map requires really specific setups and executes. XSET had an almost perfect defensive half on 100 Thieves’ map pick to take a definitive 10-2 lead at the halftime point. Now 100 Thieves were in a rough spot, they attempted to pull things back as much as possible, winning the important pistol and anti-eco rounds to start the second half with some form of momentum. But those few rounds were not enough to start the entire comeback, as XSET was able to shut down 100 Thieves’ bonus round before easily closing the series and the map 13-4. Once again it was the incredible play from Cryocells, who was the difference maker during the second map. Using a really mechanical operator in Jett this time around, Cryocells controlled 100 Thieves back with the Jett and finished with a massive 3.83 K/D, having a total of 23 kills with only six deaths to his name.
While XSET looks to qualify for Copenhagen in their next match, 100 Thieves have a lot more work to do. They will need to win multiple series from the losers bracket if they hope to make their first LAN appearance of the year.
